Average house price now £234,000. Or maybe it’s £170,000.

We’ve mentioned before the problem with looking at house price indices that categorically state the average price of a house in the UK. But with all the recent media frenzy about house price inflation in the last few days, it’s worth reiterating that there are various different organisations measuring prices in various different ways.

This means that while Nationwide can confidently state that the typical UK home is now worth £170,514, LSL can equally confidently confirm that the figure is actually £233,776. Yes, house prices are going up, but it’s worth taking some, if not all, of the figures with a pinch of salt.

Similarly, the story about the UK suddenly becoming a nation of half a million estate agents shows that some statistics really are as dodgy as they sound. Estate Agency Today was quite rightly sceptical about the number, pointing out that these official ‘real estate activities’ figures also include, for example, conference and exhibition workers. “The numbers would also appear to include council housing departments,” they point out, “the stately homes sector and their staff, and property managers of, for example, schools and hospitals. We also suspect that commercial agents are lumped in with residential.”

Property supply crisis

The total volume of property for sale across England and Wales has fallen by 14% over the last year, according to home.co.uk who say it is now 30% lower than this time five years ago and the main reason why prices are rising.

Doug Shephard, Director at Home.co.uk﻿ said: “Demand, fed by the growth in cheaper borrowing, including the Help to Buy scheme, is already outpacing the overall supply of properties for sale and pushing prices even higher. The supply crisis, which is most acute in London and the South East, is not going to go away. As it stands, there is no indication of a sudden influx of new build or resale property to help address the housing supply crisis. Quite the contrary, domestic and foreign investment demand remains high and is rapidly driving prices in the capital and surrounding areas to precarious levels relative to average earnings”

Gas Safety Week

To mark Gas Safety Week which begins today, Gas Safe Register has launched the first nationwide interactive gas map which identifies the most dangerous postcodes in the country. The map also shows that one in six homes had an unsafe gas appliance, and that gas work in one in 25 homes was immediately dangerous and if left unchecked could lead to a gas fire, explosion, leak or carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning.

Birmingham was identified as the most unsafe city, with the highest number of homes found with dangerous gas appliances – one in three homes were unsafe. This was closely followed by Cardiff (31%), Edinburgh (31%), Norwich (28%) and Ipswich (28%). In comparison, Brighton is the safest city, with just one in 20 appliances found to be dangerous. This is followed by Liverpool (6%), Southampton (6%), Northampton (7%) and Hull (8%).

The public is also being caught out by cowboy gas fitters pretending to be registered engineers – nearly 3,000 illegal gas jobs have been investigated by Gas Safe Register since 2010, of which two thirds of the homes were left unsafe and one in five were so dangerous that the Register had to turn off the gas appliance immediately.

Pictured is a 4 bedroom detached house for sale in Anlaby Road, Hull, on for £335,000 with William H Brown.

Surely for these averages to mean anything they should be split into London and the real world. Then the London average is dragged down by the figures from Gateshead and the Gateshead figure inflated by the London proces.

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The main reason for the supply crisis in housing is Stamp Duty. First time buyers will always want homes- I will stay in my ’starter-home’ for 7 years rather than 5 in order to pay for the stamp duty when I move on. This tax reduces fluidity in the market driving down supply